City project by river fronts on behalf of university international research

Universities are dealing with strategies in order to improve their performances in terms of ranking classification, struggling for a good position. At the spatial planning and urban design domains the river fronts are very challenging territories to deal with, because they are sensitive areas, not only in environmental terms but also considering the requirements of the urban continuity. Urban projects for the places of contact in between the urban fabric and rivers are mainly focused on building issues and urban development questions, rather than of ecological approaches encouraging the contact of inhabitants with nature. Therefore, this research presents solutions of rethinking the territories of contact in between the urban fabric and the river water fronts, having as pivotal concern the ecological solutions. These urban projects are focused on the requalification solutions in order to ensure a better urban continuity from the buildings to the water front. The strategy is driven by the river activities, nautical sports, low density buildings, preservation of local heritage and paths for pedestrians. The case study is a quiet town in the central region of Portugal, well known by its thermal baths, which are coming from the roman times. Every year, the city of São Pedro do Sul is visited by many tourists, looking for a very pleasant place, allowing them to improve their health condition going to the thermal baths, or the contact with nature going to the Vouga river water front. This is a city plenty of greenery, high natural potential, no pollution, and where the majority of dwellings are single houses. The main architectural landmark of the case study area is the old train station, a building from the 19 th century. In fact, since a long time ago, there are no more trains arriving to this city. Recently, the train track line was converted into an ecological corridor for pedestrians and bicycles. Besides of this effort, the place remains waiting for an urban rehabilitation opportunity as a whole, with several urban voids, buildings in bad status of conservation, car parking with no planning or a lack of functional diversity. Its huge potential regarding the presence of the river water front is, consequently, not preserved nor enhanced. In this sense, there was an international research, on behalf of the Urban Planning Unit at the Master Degree in Architecture at the University of Beira Interior, resulting from an agreement with the Municipality of São Pedro do Sul. The urban project solutions were proposed in this academic environment comprising several teams of international students, not only coming from Portugal, but also from Greece, Brazil, Slovakia, Lithuania and Poland. There was a competition and monetary prizes to the best urban projects, sponsored by the city hall. This was a motivation for students along to the project process. The conclusions show that all the solutions are proposing strategies to preserve and to enhance the ecological identity of the place. Thus, this article will present the contents, options and solutions of the second best urban project, which was designed by a team of international students from Poland. This experience is an example of a key strategy in the internationalization process of the university.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Soft Mobility as an Urban Design Solution for Water Fronts

Soft mobility is on the top of the agenda as a strategy for cities liveability. It refers to non-motorized transportation solutions in order to promote the human mobility. In this domain pedestrian and bicycle paths have a pivotal interest on behalf of urban design solutions. This paper presents an urban design project focused on soft mobility solutions having as case study a Portuguese city. The area called Train Station surroundings in São Pedro do Sul, makes the link in between the urban fabric and the Vouga river banks. This city is very well-known because of its thermal baths, known since the Roman times. The presented urban design project is a result of the agreement in between the University team, on behalf of the Urban Planning Unit of the Master Degree in Architecture at the University of Beira Interior in Covilhã and the Municipal authority of São Pedro do Sul. The students were organized in several international groups (including people from Portugal, Greece, Brazil, Slovakia, Lithuania and Poland) in order to propose their urban design projects, ensuring the continuity of the urban fabric with the water front. The city hall has organized a competition and has offered four prizes (1st , 2 nd and 2 honour awards) for the best projects, which was an extra motivation for students. Regarding the presented solution, the conclusions show that the main strategy was to propose an urban system of soft mobility pathways for pedestrians and bicycles, in order to connect the main natural element in the case study area which is the river with the city. This soft mobility system is connecting places such as the existing low density housing neighbourhoods or the most relevant historical and cultural landmark, the nineteen-century train station building.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

DNA Damage/Repair and Polymorphism of the hOGG1 Gene in Lymphocytes of AMD Patients

Oxidative stress is thought to play a role in the pathogenesis of age-related macular degeneration (AMD). We determined the extent of oxidative DNA damage and the kinetics of its removal as well as the genotypes of the Ser326Cys polymorphism of the hOGG1 gene in lymphocytes of 30 wet AMD patients and 30 controls. Oxidative DNA damage induced by hydrogen peroxide and its repair were evaluated by the comet assay and DNA repair enzymes. We observed a higher extent of endogenous oxidative DNA damage and a lower efficacy of its repair in AMD patients as compared with the controls. We did not find any correlation between the extent of DNA damage and efficacy of DNA repair with genotypes of the Ser326Cys polymorphism. The results obtained suggest that oxidative DNA damage and inefficient DNA repair can be associated with AMD and the variability of the hOOG1 gene may not contribute to this association

Lack of NWC protein (c11orf74 homolog) in murine spermatogenesis results in reduced sperm competitiveness and impaired ability to fertilize egg cells in vitro

<div><p>NWC is an uncharacterised protein containing three strongly conserved domains not found in any other known protein. Previously, we reported that the NWC protein is detected in cells in the germinal layer in murine testes (strain: C57BL/6), and its knockout results in no obvious phenotype. We determined the NWC expression pattern during spermatogenesis, and found this protein in spermatocytes and round spermatids, but not in epididymal sperm. Although NWC knockout males are fertile, we further characterised their reproductive potential employing non-standard mating that better simulates the natural conditions by including sperm competition. Such an approach revealed that the sperm of knockout males fail to successfully compete with control sperm. After analysing selected characteristics of the male reproductive system, we found that <i>NWC</i> knockout sperm had a reduced ability to fertilize cumulus-intact eggs during IVF. This is the first report describing a subtle phenotype of <i>NWC</i> knockout mice that could be detected under non-standard mating conditions. Our results indicate that NWC plays an important role in spermatogenesis and its deficiency results in the production of functionally impaired sperm.</p></div

The Potential Role of Metalloproteinases in Neurogenesis in the Gerbil Hippocampus Following Global Forebrain Ischemia

BACKGROUND: Matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) have recently been considered to be involved in the neurogenic response of adult neural stem/progenitor cells. However, there is a lack of information showing direct association between the activation of MMPs and the development of neuronal progenitor cells involving proliferation and/or further differentiation in vulnerable (Cornus Ammoni-CA1) and resistant (dentate gyrus-DG) to ischemic injury areas of the brain hippocampus. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We showed that dynamics of MMPs activation in the dentate gyrus correlated closely with the rate of proliferation and differentiation of progenitor cells into mature neurons. In contrast, in the damaged CA1 pyramidal cells layer, despite the fact that some proliferating cells exhibited antigen specific characteristic of newborn neuronal cells, these did not attain maturity. This coincides with the low, near control-level, activity of MMPs. The above results are supported by our in vitro study showing that MMP inhibitors interfered with both the proliferation and differentiation of the human neural stem cell line derived from umbilical cord blood (HUCB-NSCs) toward the neuronal lineage. CONCLUSION: Taken together, the spatial and temporal profiles of MMPs activity suggest that these proteinases could be an important component in neurogenesis-associated processes in post-ischemic brain hippocampus

Azimuthal anisotropy of charged jet production in root s(NN)=2.76 TeV Pb-Pb collisions

We present measurements of the azimuthal dependence of charged jet production in central and semi-central root s(NN) = 2.76 TeV Pb-Pb collisions with respect to the second harmonic event plane, quantified as nu(ch)(2) (jet). Jet finding is performed employing the anti-k(T) algorithm with a resolution parameter R = 0.2 using charged tracks from the ALICE tracking system. The contribution of the azimuthal anisotropy of the underlying event is taken into account event-by-event. The remaining (statistical) region-to-region fluctuations are removed on an ensemble basis by unfolding the jet spectra for different event plane orientations independently. Significant non-zero nu(ch)(2) (jet) is observed in semi-central collisions (30-50% centrality) for 20 <p(T)(ch) (jet) <90 GeV/c. The azimuthal dependence of the charged jet production is similar to the dependence observed for jets comprising both charged and neutral fragments, and compatible with measurements of the nu(2) of single charged particles at high p(T). Good agreement between the data and predictions from JEWEL, an event generator simulating parton shower evolution in the presence of a dense QCD medium, is found in semi-central collisions. (C) 2015 CERN for the benefit of the ALICE Collaboration. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Peer reviewe

Production of He-4 and (4) in Pb-Pb collisions at root(NN)-N-S=2.76 TeV at the LHC

Results on the production of He-4 and (4) nuclei in Pb-Pb collisions at root(NN)-N-S = 2.76 TeV in the rapidity range vertical bar y vertical bar <1, using the ALICE detector, are presented in this paper. The rapidity densities corresponding to 0-10% central events are found to be dN/dy4(He) = (0.8 +/- 0.4 (stat) +/- 0.3 (syst)) x 10(-6) and dN/dy4 = (1.1 +/- 0.4 (stat) +/- 0.2 (syst)) x 10(-6), respectively. This is in agreement with the statistical thermal model expectation assuming the same chemical freeze-out temperature (T-chem = 156 MeV) as for light hadrons. The measured ratio of (4)/He-4 is 1.4 +/- 0.8 (stat) +/- 0.5 (syst). (C) 2018 Published by Elsevier B.V.Peer reviewe

Forward-central two-particle correlations in p-Pb collisions at root s(NN)=5.02 TeV

Two-particle angular correlations between trigger particles in the forward pseudorapidity range (2.5 2GeV/c. (C) 2015 CERN for the benefit of the ALICE Collaboration. Published by Elsevier B. V.Peer reviewe